Morning Edition

On NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, the play-down-Islam game was in full swing. The headline online was “Orlando Shooter Update: Few Warning Signs Point To Radicalization.”

NPR anchor Scott Simon said unnamed federal officials were “struck by the fact that the shooter, Omar Mateen, doesn't seem to have exhibited any of the warning signs often associated with radicalization. They're exploring whether Mateen invoked ISIS's name not because he follows that group, but perhaps in hopes of getting more publicity for his attacks.” Because, you know, shooting 100 people wouldn't get much publicity otherwise.

The NFL has a serious PR problem with concussions. NFL star Junior Seau committed suicide in 2012 to underline the issue. Count on flower children at NPR to go over the edge with this issue. The problem isn't the size and strength, and therefore power of professional football players. No, it's -- ready? -- the evil game of football itself.

This is your taxpayer-funded broadcasting in action: Planned Parenthood selling dead baby parts is just a "women's health" group aiding "medical research," but the NFL is organized savagery.

Following the lead of The New York Times, NPR on Saturday touted a new American trend – “climate change refugees,” people being subsidized by the federal government to move away from their lives on the coast.

On Wednesday morning, NPR’s Morning Edition bowed deeply to the late “hippie dippie” comedian George Carlin. The man who mocked everyone else in an increasingly sour, misanthropic way was revered as a figure of “eternal respect.”

The occasion was Carlin’s egotistically organized archives of his career being donated to a new National Comedy Center. NPR reporter Elizabeth Blair never found a note of controversy in his history, just an echo of reverence:

In 2013, NPR host Rachel Martin spent eight minutes of taxpayer-subsidized air time on the last Sunday before Christmas promoting the atheist band Bad Religion wrecking Christmas songs and found no time to question if it offended.

NPR devoted almost 12 minutes to promoting atheist actor/writer Ricky Gervais on the morning of May 1. Weekend Edition Sunday anchor Rachel Martin found a piety worth defending. She hounded Gervais about being insensitive to Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner and the “trans community.” Gervais surely raised some liberal eyebrows for testily responding “I hope we’re all grown-ups” when it comes to Jenner humor.

NPR's Scott Horsley acted as a stenographer for President Obama on Tuesday's Morning Edition, as he reported on the Democrat's Monday slam of the news media. Horsley played up how the President "spoke as a politician who's been on the receiving end of tough questions; but also as a somewhat cranky news consumer who thinks too many reporters are falling down on the job." The correspondent also turned to a talking head who backed up Obama's criticism of the press.

When NPR Morning Edition anchor Steve Inskeep isn’t offering gentle interviews to President Obama and comparing him to Abe Lincoln when interviewing his aides, he goes out and interviews journalists who say that Obama is “the greatest terrorist hunter in the history of the American presidency.”

The journalist was Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who's written a very long 20,000-word opus on "The Obama Doctrine," and as usual, the president grants access in exchange for gush:

On Monday’s Morning Edition, NPR media reporter David Folkenflik traveled to an old and faithful geyser of Donald Trump mockery: the late Spy magazine, the lefty satire rag run by Graydon Carter (now running Vanity Fair magazine) and Kurt Andersen (now hosting the pretentious arts program Studio 60 on NPR stations on the weekends). The magazine debuted in 1986 and died in 1998.

It is true that Spy had a special appetite for mocking Trump to the hilt….but it’s also true that Spy did some rather unforgettable mocking of the other frontrunner in the presidential race, Hillary Clinton. NPR never went there in a seven-minute Trump-bashing segment.

On Thursday’s Morning Edition, National Public Radio touted listening to “voices from around the world” and how they think about the American presidential election. They picked communist China, where a woman lectured the NPR audience that Donald Trump’s statements against immigration are “in conflict with American values.”

The Hill newspaper carried this headline on Monday: “Poll: Only 15 percent say they have benefited from ObamaCare.” Sarah Ferris reported just 15 percent of people say they have personally benefited from ObamaCare, although more than one-third believe it has helped the people of their state, according to an NPR poll released Monday, while 26 percent said they have been personally harmed .

NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep is a big fan of President Obama, and when he interviews him, he helpfully sets him up. In a recent interview on race relations, Inskeep added little prompts instead of questions. That’s not what Ted Cruz received on Wednesday’s show. Inskeep was blunt when discussing the new Trump idea of banning Muslims from entering America: "Which Muslims do you want to keep out of the United States?"

NPR posted the full transcript online. What that demonstrated was that NPR and Inskeep routinely sliced out (for time and surely, for political convenience) Cruz whacking away at Democrats and explaining what's wrong with Islamism.

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